Questions for the 'Hurrah for Israel' crowd

[Black Dog]

There was no such thing as the Palestinian people in '48

But there is in 2007.

[jefferiah]

There was no such thing as the Palestinian people in '48

But there is in 2007.

But in the 40s Black Dog, how did Israel steal land from a nation that never existed.

[Black Dog]

But in the 40s Black Dog, how did Israel steal land from a nation that never existed.

The land was stolen from people. Those people subsequently identified as a nation. It's kinda like how, before 1948, there was no nation of Israel, but there was a Jewish people who subsequently created the Israeli identity.

[jefferiah]

The British divided the land between the two. The Jews got the short side of the stick their. But the Arabs didnt even like the Jews having any side of the stick, so they tried to destroy them. And the Jews survived and since then the same thing keeps happening. Arabs try to get rid of Jews, Jews defend themselves. Ask Walid Shoebat, the former PLO terrorist, if the Palestinians and Arab nations honestly just want to have a peaceful solution.

[Black Dog]

The British divided the land between the two. The Jews got the short side of the stick their. But the Arabs didnt even like the Jews having any side of the stick, so they tried to destroy them. And the Jews survived and since then the same thing keeps happening. Arabs try to get rid of Jews, Jews defend themselves. Ask Walid Shoebat, the former PLO terrorist, if the Palestinians and Arab nations honestly just want to have a peaceful solution.

And this is relevant to the question of the existence of a Palestinian nation...how?

[jefferiah]

But in the 40s Black Dog, how did Israel steal land from a nation that never existed.

The land was stolen from people. Those people subsequently identified as a nation. It's kinda like how, before 1948, there was no nation of Israel, but there was a Jewish people who subsequently created the Israeli identity.

Most of the land was uninhabited and the Jews received a small crappy part of that land. It was not a flourishing land. It was a barren cesspool, until Israel began to make it into something, cleaning the water and replanting forests.

[Black Dog]

Most of the land was uninhabited and the Jews received a small crappy part of that land. It was not a flourishing land. It was a barren cesspool, until Israel began to make it into something, cleaning the water and replanting forests.

So, if the land was uninhabited, where did those 800,000 odd Arab refugees come from?

[geoffrey]

No, but you see them sending their youth in with tanks and guns blowing up airports and water treatment facilities.

Bullshit. Let's see the proof. Israel is generally good at keeping their attacks to terrorists. Like I said, in the case when things go wrong, I'd like to see Israel more accountable for their mistakes.

Palestine is getting what they deserve.

!!!

How did they 'deserve' what happened in 1947-48?

Few if any of those people are still alive. You've really got to get over your nationalism thinking, it died out in the 40's. The individuals that make up Palestine as it is today have in a majority elected a internationally recognized terrorist group as their government. I honestly can't give a rats ass about people that do that. Palestinians have to make some steps towards peace, some great steps were being made... and then they elected Hamas.

[jefferiah]

I didnt say it was uninhabited, I said most of it was. There was no nation under any name that was Palestine. The land was part of a larger Ottoman Empire. The inhabitants were from different backgrounds. Some of them were Jewish. In the late part of the 1800s Jewish people began buying land in Palestine and moving in. They didnt steal the land. They bought it and they moved into this area of the Ottoman Empire (not of a Palestinian nation). The Jews began to do things to revitalize the barren crappy land of Palestine, to rid the swamps of malaria and clean it up. The work the Jews did attracted arabic immigrants from neighbouring areas. There was no effort to rid the areas of any Arabs who were living there or even to stop the influx of Arab immigrants coming in.

In 1916 when the Ottoman Empire fell control of the southern part went to Britain and France. France got Lebanon and Syria, while Britain got control over "Palestine" and "Jordan". The British split the land between the Arabic inhabitants and the Jews. The Jews got about 25 percent and the Arabs got 75. And then later the British abandoned the whole thing and let the United Nations deal with. The United Nations made basically the same division and gave around 25 percent to the Jews and the Arabs 75. The Jews accepted this deal, but the Arabs didnt, they wanted it all. It was never their nation either. It was part of the Ottoman Turk Empire, during the reign of which many Jewish people began emigrating to the land (and as I mentioned above, many Arabs came after because the Jews were doing great work in revitalizing a cesspool) The Jews declared themselves a nation on May 14, 1948. The very next day seven Arab nations invaded Israel. The Arabs living with Israel were encouraged to leave by the invading armies. Why? Because they were going to destroy Israel, plain and simple.

[Black Dog]

Gee, thanks for the "history" lesson. But again: what bearing does it have on the question of Palestinian nationhood? I mean right now, you seem to be implying that those 800,000 peope (the vast majority of whom left unwillingly and not under orders from their Arab overlords) deserved to get the boot because they weren't using the land to your liking. In any case, the fact remains that, as a result of the same historical circumstances which led to the creation of the nation of Israel, there is a nation of Palestine today.

[Figleaf]

Sure it is. Now all of a sudden they are a people, a nation, who had their land stolen.

What's that got to do with the word they are called by??

Anyway, it's not all of a sudden. They were recognized as an identifiable group long ago.

And their land was 'stolen'.

BTW, how about answering my original questions?

[Figleaf]

There was no such thing as the Palestinian people in '48

But there is in 2007.

But in the 40s Black Dog, how did Israel steal land from a nation that never existed.

You're getting caught up in words again. Land wasn't 'stolen' from a 'nation'. A state (Israel) was imposed over the objections of the inhabitants of a region.

[Figleaf]

The British divided the land between the two.

You don't know the history properly. The British mandate was supposed to expire an the UN plan was to divide the land between the two. (Even though the Arab inhabitants never accepted the idea.) In the result, it didn't play out that way; Israel declared itself a state and no-one bothered to ensure the Palestinians got theirs.

The Jews got the short side of the stick their.

How so? They got a state.

[Figleaf]

No, but you see them sending their youth in with tanks and guns blowing up airports and water treatment facilities.

Bullshit. Let's see the proof.

WTF??? Did Israeli forces or did they not bomb airport in Beirut last year? Get your head straight, man.

[Figleaf]

There was no nation under any name that was Palestine. The land was part of a larger Ottoman Empire.

The region was known as Palestine since Roman times. Prior to the British Mandate it was part of the Ottoman Empire, which itself had conquered the territory and ruled it autocratically.

The inhabitants were from different backgrounds.

The vast preponderance of them were culturally Arab.

There was no effort to rid the areas of any Arabs who were living there or even to stop the influx of Arab immigrants coming in.

Irgun and other Zionist military forces were active in ethnic struggles prior to the declaration of Israel, and after the declaration of Israel many Palestinians were driven out.

The Jews accepted this deal, but the Arabs didnt, they wanted it all.

The Arabs had no particular political objection to the presence of Jews; they objected to having someone create a foreign state in their midst.

The Arabs living with Israel were encouraged to leave by the invading armies.

Prove that.

[jefferiah]

Gee, thanks for the "history" lesson. But again: what bearing does it have on the question of Palestinian nationhood? I mean right now, you seem to be implying that those 800,000 peope (the vast majority of whom left unwillingly and not under orders from their Arab overlords) deserved to get the boot because they weren't using the land to your liking. In any case, the fact remains that, as a result of the same historical circumstances which led to the creation of the nation of Israel, there is a nation of Palestine today.

They were instructed to leave by the Arab nations who were invading. Ben-Gurion urged them to remain and not to leave, and promised they would not be harmed. Those who remained became full citizens of Israel.

Its not the name of the nation itself, but there never was an independent nation of any kind under any name that was there before the Jews began emigrating to that area in the late 1800s. It was under Ottoman Control. There were no Palestinian people. There were people from many places. Native inhabitants and Jordanians and Jews even. And after the Jews began to do work on the land it attracted more arabic peoples to the area that was previously a barren craphole. Read Mark Twain's assessment of the Holy Land when he visited. The Ottoman Empire fell and the land was first divied up by the British and then later they left the job to the UN. The Arabs did not accept the offer which gave the Arabic peoples 75 percent of the land. They declared war on the new nation of Israel. And the refugees left. Estimates of how many refugees there were range from 500 000 to 800 000. They left not because of anything the Jews did.

Khaled al-'Azm, Prime Minister of Syria in 1948 and 1949, had this to say in his memoirs:

"We have brought destruction upon a million Arab refugees, by calling upon them and pleading with them to leave their lands, their homes, their work and their business, and we have caused them to be barren and unemployed though each one of them had been working and qualified in a trade from which he could make a living. In addition, we accustomed them to begging for hand-outs and to suffice with what little the UN organisation would allocate them."

In 1949 Israel offered to let 100,000 refugees (whom they had urged not to leave in the first place) back in. This was sort of a peace offering. But the Arab nations declined, because no peace offering from Israel was acceptable to them.

This whole thing about the refugees is a big farce. The Arabs dont give a shit about them at all. They have only been used as an excuse to eliminate Israel.

In an interview to the Cairo journal "Al-Masri" on 11 October 1949, Egyptian Foreign Minister Muhammad Salah A-Din said:

"In demanding the return of the Palestinian refugees, the Arabs mean their return as masters, not slaves; or, to put it quite clearly -- the intention is the termination of Israel."

President Nasser of Egypt

"Our aim is to restore the national rights of the Palestinian people, namely to destroy Israel."

[Black Dog]

They were instructed to leave by the Arab nations who were invading. Ben-Gurion urged them to remain and not to leave, and promised they would not be harmed. Those who remained became full citizens of Israel.

Prove it. I'm loathe to go over this again, but I've dealt with this (or rather, Zionist historian Benny Morris has) many times.

Had such a blanket order (or series of orders) been given, it would have found an echo in the thousands of documents produced by the Haganah's Intelligence Service, the IDF Intelligence Service, the Jewish Agency's Political Department Arab Division, the Foreign Ministry Middle East Affairs Department; or in the memoranda and dispatches of the various British and American diplomatic posts in the area (in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, Amman, Beirut, Damascus, and Cairo); or in the various radio monitoring services (such as the BBC's). Any or all of these would have produced reports, memoranda, or correspondence referring to the Arab order and quoting from it. But no such reference to or quotation from such an order or series of orders exists in the contemporary documentation. This documentation, it should be noted, includes daily, almost hourly, monitoring of Arab radio broadcasts, the Arab press inside and outside Palestine, and statements by the Arab and Palestinian Arab leaders. -Morris (Tikkun, Jan/Feb 1990, p80)

Its not the name of the nation itself, but there never was an independent nation of any kind under any name that was there before the Jews began emigrating to that area in the late 1800s. It was under Ottoman Control. There were no Palestinian people.

There was no nation known as Israel, or people known as Israelis at the time either. Today there is.

So, why do you accept that a state (Israel) and anational identity (Israeli) can be created out of whole cloth by imperial decree and historical circumstance, but deny the same to the Palestinians?

[Figleaf]

They were instructed to leave by the Arab nations who were invading.

Proof?

And anyway, so what if the Arab states did urge them to leave?

Ben-Gurion urged them to remain and not to leave,

Cite?

...and promised they would not be harmed.

An odd promise to make to someone in the midst of being driven out by militia gangs.

Those who remained became full citizens of Israel.

"Full" in what sense?

There were no Palestinian people.

There were people living in an area called Palestine.

There were people from many places.

The majority had deep roots there, many from at least 800AD.

Native inhabitants and Jordanian...

Caught in your own prevarications! Jordan was a modern creation.

In 1949 Israel offered to let 100,000 refugees (whom they had urged not to leave in the first place) back in.... But the Arab nations declined, ...

That makes no sense. What say could the Arab nations have in such a thing?

This whole thing about the refugees is a big farce. The Arabs dont give a shit about them at all.

The position of the Arab states vis a vis the refugees is 100% irrelevant to the rights of the refugees.

President Nasser of Egypt

"Our aim is to restore the national rights of the Palestinian people, namely to destroy Israel."

Obviously Nasser's view was that the creation of Israel against the objections of the Arab inhabitants of the area (Palestinians) was an improper action. It being improper, he viewed it as necessary to unravel that wrong.

BTW, I'm still hoping you'll answer the original questions of this thread.

[scribblet]

We've been through this before, there never was a country called Palestine, if you believe there was maybe you could provide a map showing it. What is now known as Palestine is the are west of the Jordan River which included the ancient Hebrew kingdoms of Judah, Benjamin, Ephraim and Manassah; the other part is the Gaza Strip. The word "Palestine" is taken from Hebrew Pelisti or"Philistia")

"Palestine" had no official status until after until after World War I, when it was adopted for one of the regions controlled by Great Britain (the "British Mandate")

Give the damn land back to Jordan and let them and the rest of the Arab states look after them, that is if they'll take it, and we know they are passing on that one.

[Figleaf]

We've been through this before, there never was a country called Palestine, if you believe there was maybe you could provide a map showing it.

Ummm... Who are you talking to?

No, there was no 'country' called Palestine, there was a Roman province called Palestine. But regardless, the name of the area is totally irrelevant to the right of the people there to self-determination.

BTW, I was hoping you would reply to my question in Post#4, above.

[geoffrey]

No, there was no 'country' called Palestine, there was a Roman province called Palestine. But regardless, the name of the area is totally irrelevant to the right of the people there to self-determination.

Not when a majority votes for violence. They have democracy, they can vote for peace, I eagerly await their decision to do so.

[Figleaf]

No, there was no 'country' called Palestine, there was a Roman province called Palestine. But regardless, the name of the area is totally irrelevant to the right of the people there to self-determination.

Not when a majority votes for violence. They have democracy, they can vote for peace, I eagerly await their decision to do so.

1. The election of Hamas was very very recent, compared to the long history of denial of Palestinian self-determination and so cannot be used to justify that denial retroactively.

2. The election of Hamas is no justification for denying self-determination to the Palestinians anyway, according to international law. AND they were not elected by ALL Palestinians.

3. Had Palestinian rights not been trampled for the last 50 years, they probably never would have come to the point of electing Hamas as their government anyway.

BTW, Geoffrey, how would you answer my original questions at the beginning of this topic?

[jefferiah]

They were instructed to leave by the Arab nations who were invading. Ben-Gurion urged them to remain and not to leave, and promised they would not be harmed. Those who remained became full citizens of Israel.

Prove it. I'm loathe to go over this again, but I've dealt with this (or rather, Zionist historian Benny Morris has) many times.

Had such a blanket order (or series of orders) been given, it would have found an echo in the thousands of documents produced by the Haganah's Intelligence Service, the IDF Intelligence Service, the Jewish Agency's Political Department Arab Division, the Foreign Ministry Middle East Affairs Department; or in the memoranda and dispatches of the various British and American diplomatic posts in the area (in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, Amman, Beirut, Damascus, and Cairo); or in the various radio monitoring services (such as the BBC's). Any or all of these would have produced reports, memoranda, or correspondence referring to the Arab order and quoting from it. But no such reference to or quotation from such an order or series of orders exists in the contemporary documentation. This documentation, it should be noted, includes daily, almost hourly, monitoring of Arab radio broadcasts, the Arab press inside and outside Palestine, and statements by the Arab and Palestinian Arab leaders. -Morris (Tikkun, Jan/Feb 1990, p80)

Its not the name of the nation itself, but there never was an independent nation of any kind under any name that was there before the Jews began emigrating to that area in the late 1800s. It was under Ottoman Control. There were no Palestinian people.

There was no nation known as Israel, or people known as Israelis at the time either. Today there is.

So, why do you accept that a state (Israel) and anational identity (Israeli) can be created out of whole cloth by imperial decree and historical circumstance, but deny the same to the Palestinians?

The importance of there not being a Palestine is not something I am using as an argument in the whole issue. I am using it against the assertion that the land was stolen. The land was not stolen. There is a Palestine and an Israel. But there was no Palestine when the land was supposedly stolen from the "Palestinians".

[Figleaf]

The importance of there not being a Palestine is not something I am using as an argument in the whole issue. I am using it against the assertion that the land was stolen. The land was not stolen. There is a Palestine and an Israel. But there was no Palestine when the land was supposedly stolen from the "Palestinians".

You're not paying close attention. "Stolen" in this context is a rhetorical description for the imposition of an unwanted state over the objections of the region's inhabitants.

BTW, do you have any respones to the original questions of this topic? (See Post #1, above.)

[jefferiah]

1. Journalist writing about the events of 1948

Mahmud Al-Habbash, a regular writer in the official PA paper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, indicates in his column “The Pulse of Life” that the Arabs left Israel in 1948 only after political Arab leaders persuaded them to do so by promising the Arabs a speedy return to their homes in Palestine:

“…The leaders and the elites promised us at the beginning of the “Catastrophe” [[the establishment of Israel and the creation of refugee problem] in 1948, that the duration of the exile will not be long, and that it will not last more than a few days or months, and afterwards the refugees will return to their homes, which most of them did not leave only until they put their trust in those “Arkuvian” promises made by the leaders and the political elites. Afterwards, days passed, months, years and decades, and the promises were lost with the strain of the succession of events…” [Term “Arkuvian,” is after Arkuv – a figure from Arab tradition - who was known for breaking his promises and for his lies.”] ” [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, December 13, 2006]

2. Woman who fled Israel in 1948

“We heard sounds of explosions and of gunfire at the beginning of the summer in the year of the “Catastrophe” [The establishment of Israel and the expulsion from the land in 1948]. They told us: The Jews attacked our region and it is better to evacuate the village and return, after the battle is over. And indeed there were among us [who fled Israel] those who left a fire burning under the pot, those who left their flock [of sheep] and those who left their money and gold behind, based on the assumption that we would return after a few hours.” [Asmaa Jabir Balasimah Um Hasan, Woman who fled Israel, Al-Ayyam, May 16, 2006]

3. Son and grandson of those who fled in 1948

An Arab viewer called Palestinian Authority TV and quoted his father and grandfather, complaining that in 1948 the Arab District Officer ordered all Arabs to leave Palestine or be labeled traitors. In response, Arab MK Ibrahim Sarsur, then Head of the Islamic Movement in Israel, cursed the leaders who ordered Arabs to leave, thus, acknowledging Israel’s assertion.

Statement of son and grandson of man who fled:

“Mr. Ibrahim [sarsur]. I address you as a Muslim. My father and grandfather told me that during the “Catastrophe” [establishment of Israel in 1948 and the expulsion from the land], our district officer issued an order that whoever stays in Palestine and in Majdel [near Ashkelon – Southern Israel] is a traitor, he is a traitor.”

Response from Ibrahim Sarsur, Head of the Islamic Movement in Israel:

“The one who gave the order forbidding them to stay there bears guilt for this, in this life and the Afterlife throughout history until Resurrection Day.” [PA TV April 30, 1999]

4. Article by senior PA journalist

Fuad Abu Higla, then a regular columnist in the official PA daily Al Hayat Al Jadida, wrote an article before an Arab Summit, which criticized the Arab leaders for a series of failures. One of the failures he cited, in the name of a prisoner, was that an earlier generation of Arab leaders “forced” them to leave Israel in 1948, again placing the blame for the flight on the Arab leaders.